If You Can Only See It
by betweenthetwo
Summary: He died and her whole life changed, but the worst part is that it also stayed the same. Alicia in mourning, with a little help.


Title: **If You Can Only See It**

Rating: K

Summary: _He died and her whole life changed, but the worst part is that it also stayed the same._ Alicia in mourning, with a little help.

Characters: Alicia Florrick / Will Gardner, Alicia Florrick / Finn Polmar, Eli Gold, Grace Florrick

Disclaimer: I own nothing, this is just a little something to pass the time.

* * *

Her first thoughts every morning are still for Grace and Zach: are they safe, are they healthy, are they ready for school and will they need a ride, need her to sign something or be somewhere? Then her phone vibrates and it's work, work, work. Emails from Cary, from Carey, from a client. A text from Robin about a lead. A voicemail from Eli (does the man sleep?).

And then, of course, she remembers that Will is dead (_dead_) and Grace's PTA meeting and Cary's concerns about billables and Eli's urgent messages don't mean a thing for the few minutes it takes her to fight back the tears, fight the urge to pull the covers over her head and never, ever get out of bed again.

And that's a good day.

But, she does get out of bed, and she checks on her kids and she showers and takes her coffee black and does her hair and gets in her car. She drives to work and she smiles at Alice in reception, she takes meetings with clients and she makes decisions with Cary. She works too hard and too late and everything is exactly the same as its been since she left Lockhart Gardner except that place in her head that used to be filled with worrying if Will would hate her forever is now just a hole where she buries her darkest thoughts about what forever means when someone is dead.

At work she longs for home, for a comfortable cardigan and a glass of wine and some silence. At home, she craves work, for something to drag her out of the echo of her _what ifs _and _if onlys. _Grace and Zach try, they do, and Peter does something she suspects he thinks is trying, and her mother, somehow, is a source of comfort. Owen calls and Eli frowns at her when she tells him she's fine and every time she sees Diane they share a look that says _I know_ before they jump down each other's professional throats.

Will is dead. He is dead. He died and her whole life changed, but the worst part is that it also stayed the same.

* * *

"Did you love him?" Grace is gentle and good, she reminds herself, Grace is not trying to hurt you. Her daughter's mouth is pressed together in a hard line and she wants to smooth the frown lines from her forehead.

Before, she would have said: He was my friend. I knew him half my life. He helped me out when no one else would. She would have dressed up the truth in half lies to make it easier for the world to hear.

"Yes." Her hand is reaching for the bottle of wine before she remembers that it's morning and she can't drink in the morning. Not in front of the kids. Not before a client meeting.

"Then why weren't you …" Grace stops herself.

"It was complicated, Grace." Her voice is so tired and she knows she doesn't sound convincing. "Are you ready for school?"

She won't let this change her children's lives. If she lets Will dying into their world, how can she justify not letting _Will_ into their world. (She can't).

* * *

Eli isn't happy with their "Bill and Hillary" situation and she knows it's partly because of _how it will look_ and partly because he does actually care, in his strange Eli way. She appreciates his efforts to conceal

Peter's fling with the redhead in his office, and she's grateful he doesn't push her to change her mind.

"You're sure?" he asks when she shakes her head at his suggestion of marriage counseling, then nods and drops the subject.

There's no going back where Peter is concerned.

He says he can't compete with a dead man and she wants to tell him that he couldn't compete with Will alive, but that isn't true. He did compete, and mostly, he won. He won a thousand years ago when he whisked her away from Alicia Cavanaugh and showed her she didn't have to be her mother's daughter. He won when their children looked like him and smiled like him and loved him. He won when she was too scared to put herself and her happiness first for fear she would wake up one morning and Alicia Florrick would be gone.

She's not Alicia Florrick anymore, not really. That's good, if a little too late. Alicia Florrick thought she had it all figured out, thought she could engineer her own happiness and her career and her self. And then Jeffrey Grant put a bullet through all of it and now she has a business she doesn't have the heart to run, a husband she can't divorce and children who don't and can't understand how she loved a man she chose not to be with. Everyone around her sees her choosing a ghost over Peter, and they don't realize: she's not trying to resurrect Will, she's choosing to kill Alicia Florrick.

And that's precisely the kind of conversation she can't have with Eli because she sounds crazy. But, she's earned a little crazy.

But crazy doesn't run a business and crazy doesn't keep clients and crazy doesn't raise well adjusted children, so she saves it for the nights when the kids are at Peter's and she's halfway through a bottle of wine and instead of crying, she's biting her lip and looking at her phone and wanting to talk to _someone_ but knowing the list of people she can actually talk to is almost no one. She's never been good at friends.

But there isn't_ no one_, and he picks up on the fourth ring.

"Hello?" His voice sounds sleep-logged and she immediately regrets the call, feels like a teenager. "Alicia?"

"Finn, hi, I'm sorry to bother you. It's late."

"No, no, it's fine." There's a rustle across the line and she imagines him sitting up, rubbing his eyes. Foolish things to imagine, she's never seen him do anything like that, and image is somewhere between Peter and Will and all wrong.

"I feel like I woke you up."

"If I admit you woke me up I have to admit I fell asleep in front of the television and I'm not ready to do that. Is everything ok?" " There is something so gentle about him.

"Yes, yes, sorry. I just… wanted to see how you're doing. With the State's Attorney's race, I know Eli can be…"

"Intense?"

"Overwhelming, yes." They both laugh, a little, and it feels good, feels new. "Is the endorsement going ahead?"

If he wonders why she doesn't know, why she's asking him about her own husband, he doesn't ask.

"I assume so, I haven't received a panicked call from Eli in the last hour. That's a good thing, right?"

"I expect so. I'm pretty certain he doesn't sleep, so if he's not calling you it's because everything is fine."

"Not because he fell asleep in front of SportsCenter?"

"I'm not sure Eli's ever seen a sport."

"Right, C-SPAN?"

"Hardball, probably. Meet the Press reruns?" They're talking nonsense. She knows its time to hang up, to finish her bottle of wine and fall into bed in the silence of her empty apartment.

"How are you?" There's that softness again. And it's dangerous, because there's something about the silence that surrounds Finn that makes her want to talk, to say everything that comes to mind, and she can't. She barely knows him.

"I'm… OK?"

"OK is good. It's a start."

"It is." She takes another sip of wine. "I don't know if I'm doing this right," she admits, feeling the dam about to burst.

"Doing what?"

"Mourning." It's too easy, to talk to him. "I don't know if I'm getting it wrong. Some days I feel like nothing in the world has changed and I'm still going to work and taking care of my kids and it just…" She hopes he can't hear the tears in her voice. "It feels like it should be bigger."

She pictures him closing his eyes. She wonders if his shoulder aches.

"You're doing perfectly, Alicia," he says. That word: perfect.

"I shouldn't put this on you. I'm sorry. It's late, I…"

"Hey." There's that strength, that calm, arresting strength and she closes her mouth immediately. "I asked. I want to know."

"But you don't have to," she tells him.

"Listen, I can't even begin to imagine what you're going through," he says and she shrinks into herself a little at his words, shies away from the enormity of Will's death. "And tell me if I'm wrong, or overstepping, but I suspect there aren't many people you can talk to about this?" She lets her silence speak for her. "I'm here if you need to talk." A pause. "I'm happy to talk."

"Thank you." Her voice is quiet and she almost doesn't recognize it, but then she thinks: maybe this is her, after Alicia Florrick. "I'll let you get back to SportsCenter, I should get to bed."

"So should I, before I spill another beer on myself in my sleep." She laughs a little, and so does he, and she knows he's trying to make her feel better, to lighten the tone.

"Let me know if you need anything, with the campaign. Or with work." Give me a reason to talk to you, she thinks, hating herself..

"I'll call you tomorrow, if that's alright?"

"Yes. Perfect. Goodnight Finn."

"Goodnight, Alicia." She has always thought it intimate, saying goodnight over the phone, and this is no different.

She disconnects from the call, her cell phone warm in her hand and lays her head back on the couch. Everything is still the same. Her kids are safe and healthy and with Peter. She has thirteen unread emails on her phone, and a voicemail from Cary. She wants to but doesn't trust Kalinda, and her brother will always want her to relax and her mother will always agree with him. Everything is as it should be, except she still has a voicemail from Will saved on her phone, and he's still dead and she still doesn't know what he wanted to say or whether he hated her in his last minutes. She still chose playing pretend with Peter over being with him because it was easier and she thought being strong was the same as not being vulnerable.

Still: she feels better, lighter, different. Maybe it's because Finn knows she loved Will but doesn't know the rest. Maybe it's because even though he wasn't there, he seems to understand. Either way, she closes her eyes and for once she's not picturing blood stains on the courtroom floor or remembering the anger in Will's eyes or the last time he smiled at her.

There's nothing, and it feels like a beginning.


End file.
